BOOK REVIEW – ANGELA CARTER –
BLACK VENUS – 1985 Vintage books.
An eclectic short story collection, included in its entirety in Burning Your Boats.
BLACK VENUS – The title story tells of an affair between a freed Negro slave turned prostitute, and the poet Baudellaire, who eventually dies of syphilis and leaves her his entire fortune, allowing her to live comfortably and happily in her old age until she too succumbs to the ravages of syphilis. A story based on fact, with interludes of explanatory exposition that detract from the narrative.
THE KISS – an architect promises the wife of a leading Muslim leader that he will complete work on their commissioned new mosque on time if she will give him a kiss. Though she tries to find a way out of the bargain, she eventually concedes defeat, and the mosque is completed on time, but her jealous husband learns of the kiss and sets out to get his revenge, but the architect is too clever and escapes capture.
OUR LADY OF THE MASSACRE - A Moll Flanders type lifestyle leads a prostitute to be captured and sent to the colonies, where she escapes from a plantation and manages to get her involved with an Indian tribe, who are fascinated by her history, and regard her as a wonder. She becomes pregnant to an Indian husband, and all seems well until the tribe are wiped out by white men, and the few survivors curse her for bringing their damnation upon them, as she is taken back to the plantations.
THE CABINET OF EDGAR ALLAN POE – The author’s stories are shaped by the tragedies around him, as he grows, fearful of death, and subjected to alcoholism. A very Freudian look at the life of the great storywriter.
OVERTURE AND INCIDENTAL MUSIC FOR A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM - A revisionist look at Shakespeare’s play narrated by Hern, a hermaphrodite creature stolen by Oberon from other gods because the Herm is such that all love him, and Herm becomes a pawn and love source for Oberon, puck & Titiana, each of who steal him away from the others for their own pleasures.
PETER AND THE WOLF Nothing to do with Benjamin Britton’s opera, but a story about a boy who finds a girl who has been raised all her life by wolves. Attempting to free her and find her human side causes her wolf pack friends to attack the house to save her from him and his granny, (a complete reversal of the usual fairy tale notions). Later, becoming very religious, he meets the girl again, and sees that she has spawned cubs to the wolves. He leaves the mountains and tries to block out the memories that shake his faith.
THE KITCHEN CHILD – A rare cheerful story for Carter. A kitchen maid, making a lobster soufflé for a visiting Duke, is seduced in the kitchen, and her unseen lover takes her from behind. On the point of orgasm, she spoils the soufflé by adding too much spice, but the Duke likes it. To him, the over-spicing is a minor criticism.
The cook gives birth to a son in the kitchen he was conceived in. Both mother & son spend years wondering who the father might be. One day, the son, now in his teens, tells the Duke about this during another visit from the rich man. The Duke is moved by the story and decides to recreate the event (he may well have been the original secret lover). As he tries to penetrate the cook, watched in secret by her son, the cook attacks him, not for sexual advances, but because he might again make her spoil the food she is preparing. He is so moved that he marries her, and the son / stepson becomes and English French chef.
THE FALL RIVER AXE MURDERS A reassessment of the Lizzie Borden murders. Many versions of the story proclaim her innocence, but Carter emphasises her stifled, spinsterhood upbringing, trapped in a puritanical family, while reading of the romantic travels and adventures she could have had in a Europe se saw only briefly. Her sleepwalking fits, and attempts to buy poisons and fears of some unknown poisoner, and intruder may have made her snap and commit the murders she is so famous for. This is more a documentary essay than a story, and very well told.
© Copyright. Arthur Chappell
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